I'm gonna need a few days to think abt what it is that I want, besides my husband back.
I do understand and empathize with wanting one’s spouse back. Unfortunately, that is beyond your direct control.
Remember, two paths here. Healing and business. Be businesslike when dealing with business matters. Treat divorce as a business deal gone sideways.
I suspect your legal default position is half of everything. That is a starting point as almost everything is negotiable. (Your L will know your locale’s specifics as to what can and cannot be negotiated. As an example, in my locale, child support cannot be waived or altered.)
Often the spouse that wants out will be more generous with their negotiating. That generosity doesn’t last forever. It may serve you best to accept H’s (if he indeed does offer) greasing of the wheels.
Originally Posted by Whatlee
I received his response to my response filed almost a year ago. H still doesn't want to give me spousal support, after 32yrs of marriage he thinks I deserve nothing.
Originally Posted by Whatlee
His atty wants to know what it is that I want. It's almost like he doesn't even care what he has to do, he just wants out.
It looks pretty obvious that H spoke with his attorney and found out that he cannot just up and leave you with nothing. To me, his L is trying to get a less than 50% answer (offer) from you and then latch on to it. Be careful! Have all correspondence go through your lawyer. Remember, business.
You had your lawyer remove her gloves, so let her do her stuff.
Spousal support, half the house, half the accounts, half the pensions, etc. Do not get swindled, you have a lot of life left and need to fund it. Even if you and H get back together.
Consider your options carefully and fully. (For example, you could let H buy your portion of the house, or let H retain some accounts for his portion of the house. Or you could sell the house and spilt the proceeds. Likewise for pensions and such.) Just because H is desperate and in a rush, you need not be. Be rational and logical! Keep emotions out of these financial decisions.
Give H to God. Focus on you and your life.
D
Feelings are fleeting. Be better, not bitter. Love the person, forgive the sin.
If my counselor wouldn't have told me and if in the beginning he wasn't acting so erratically, I would say that he just don't love me anymore and truly doesn't want to be married. He hangs out and goes to church with his family, plays golf and helps our sons with physical things they may need. Just so cool, calm and collected. He doesn't act like a lot of the others I've read abt. He never reaches out to me and hasn't since Feb......I just don't know if I'm dealing with MLC.....I just don't know.
Lesson from this board...remove "just" from your vocabulary to clarify things.
Don't discount the power of "and."
I got the ILYBINILWY talk. The I want a divorce talk. Yes. I believe that was what she was feeling at that moment. Walls to me and open windows to OM. Of course that is what you will feel.
Is that the sum total of the story? Ha. Just? Ha.
How did our W/H arrive there? perhaps only useful to understand -> What has to happen to NOT be there?
In plowing through books on affairs, male/female dynamics, communications, etc... I find what I felt instinctively. Yes, you can bring back that feeling if both are willing to put in the effort. The WORK. THEY have to be interested in doing that work.
Mine has not. Yours? I don't know. They have to feel (not logic) us in a light that would interest them in trying.
ILYBINILWY and EA and MLC and Empty Nest and Internal Happiness issues (I'm not happy because of you) and menopause (for my w) and Fill in your H's issues
Which parts are of ME and I control? Those I will work on.
g
H:54 W:50 D19, D17, S12 ILYBINILWY 3/23 DB1 4/23, rescinded 5/23 DB2 6/23 ("I can't do this, I Love HIM") Legal Mediation 1-5 & W moves out 8/23 – 3/24 Settlement 5/24, Court 9/11/24 <-, D 9/16/24
G So basically what u are saying is by removing "just" that he doesn't love me or want to be married to me anymore???? Not sure what u mean by, "is that the sum total of the story?HA. Just? HA." Right now I don't think any of them want to work on loving us or being with us.
I think mine went in this order.
Lost job Depression New job Met new friend OW EA ILYBINILWY and I think MLC....not sure
If my counselor wouldn't have told me and if in the beginning he wasn't acting so erratically, I would say that he just doesn’t love me anymore and truly doesn't want to be married.
He hangs out and goes to church with his family, plays golf and helps our sons with physical things they may need. Just so cool, calm and collected. He doesn't act like a lot of the others I've read abt. He never reaches out to me and hasn't since Feb......I just don't know if I'm dealing with MLC.....I just don't know.
Two major hallmarks of MLC are depression and confusion.
A snippet from your first post:
Originally Posted by Whatlee
BD was Sept. 11, 2022, 2 days after his 51st bday. We have been married 31yrs, I've been with H since I was 15yrs old. Weeks after the BD he was so irrational like a chicken with his head cut off, opening up separate acts, looking for second jobs, walking around with 2 cell phones hanging out with a 25yr old co-worker, smoking pot, drinking. October he filed for an online divorce, as if I was gonna sign that...SMH He would have rage some nights, calm/emotional some nights just all over the place. November 28th I came home from working 16hrs to find an empty apartment, he had moved everything out. I had no place to go as our apartment was tied to his job.
For what it’s worth, I think H is in crisis.
Most MLCers wear a mask. They keep a pretty tight lid on overt outbursts/displays. Especially the low energy wallowing type. Just brooding alone. Depressed.
The cool, calm, and collected is a compartmentalization. A facade. A mask covering what is hidden within. Covering what H is running from. All those demons that come out to play when he lays still in bed in the dark of night.
Originally Posted by Whatlee
I would say that he just doesn’t love me anymore and truly doesn't want to be married.
It’s perfectly normal for you to question if H has MLC or not. Most folks around us, have absolutely no idea what MLC truly is, nor how horrible it is. We LBS often do some second guessing along our journey. With a shortage of witnesses to BD and H’s behaviours, and such a long time dim/dark, of course one starts to question.
Something I’ve often seen is binary thinking. Regarding this particular crux and other key points along an LBS path. It need not be “does H just not love me anymore” or “is it MLC”? It’s both.
A huge part of the crisis is H losing himself. His present day self. The time travel stuff, H reliving his younger years he feels he lost out on. The drinking, smoking pot, 2cell phones, etc. All those non-rational emotionally driven running behaviours.
With H acting, behaving, heck being a teenager, his love for you and his marriage gets muted. Buried. Remember, H is running and making decisions basically on emotions not intellect. Couple that with depression and you get mostly negative absolutes about things and events. As an example: H telling you that he will never feel in love with you again.
Negative absolutes are indicative of deep depression. Prognostications that they will never ever (fill in the blank), feel very real and feel like forever while embroiled in depression. Heck, I felt such things too. Eventually (hopefully) depression lifts and those depressive emotions fade and disappear.
Differing viewpoints. H is depressed and feels it is over. And you know better.
However, H cannot hear you. I mean, he really cannot fathom that his topsy turvy world is wrong. You could argue with him until blue in the face and he will not get it. He is lost in his crisis. And he needs to walk his path.
And boy oh boy, MLCers are so slow!
Remember, marathon not a sprint.
Somewhere, deep inside H, is his love for you. Sometimes we even get glimpses of our “old” spouse before the pod-person took them over.
Every MLCer is different, and every crisis is different, because every person is different. There are certainly some common crisis/MLCer traits, yet H is an individual and his crisis will be how it is due to who he is. Most posters bring the wild and crazy situations here more than the mask wearing moments. With questioning, comparing, and such, one can loose sight of the forest for the trees.
Like I said, I think you are dealing with MLC.
However, that being said, you deal with it by not dealing with it. You deal with things you can control. Focusing on you. Moving forward. Letting go. And so on.
I do understand and empathize that H’s current divorce push is stirring stuff up within you. (((Hugs))) Perfectly normal. Allow yourself to settle and you’ll find your center again.
Hang in there girl!
D
Feelings are fleeting. Be better, not bitter. Love the person, forgive the sin.
Yes. Our spouses have expressed this is how the FEEL...RIGHT NOW. I don't believe they are lying. The hard truth is they do not FEEL “in love” with us right now. The FEEL like they will have a better life not married to us.
Feelings are transient though. They change based on our thoughts and actions. Before you were married he did not FEEL “in love.” Then you did things together and that changed.
The word “just” implies these feelings happened out of nowhere and stand alone….they “just” happened.
They didn’t. Loving feelings come from doing loving things together over time. They disappear by not doing them. Cribbed from Dr. Hartley’s books.
I wasn’t trying to imply a sequence of things, though that can be a useful framework. Heh, this is what happens when I put thoughts down quickly and skip parts of my thoughts. We used to tell our children “NO Justs or Buts” when they talked to us. LOL. I meant that deleting the word “just” will let you see the rest of the story. The various reasons leading up to those feelings.
There may be some MLC going on (reliving lost youth or perceived missed ?). AND An OW will block feelings for you until that is closed off. AND Job loss -> depression. (Especially for men. Job and providing gives identity and purpose) AND …
And no, my STBXW has given no indication of wanting to work on anything. Her emotions aimed at OM override everything. To the point of her remaining effectively his secret online mistress.
Your H? I don’t know.
I saved a post, somewhere, from one of the regulars. One of a bunch on what it takes for the WAS to move toward reconciling. They will have to go through the stages of loss for the OW/OM, then the stages of loss for OUR M, then will be able to do the work…IF they choose to at that point. Sobering. And why the timelines are so long.
Which leads to
Originally Posted by bttrfly
Act as if:
So many times we see the WAS come screaming back when it's too late.
If you want a chance to fix your marriage, accept that it's dead in its current form.
If you want a chance to fix your marriage, change the man she left.
Figure out who you are, separate from being a husband and a father.
Figure out what you want.
Live your life accordingly.
Believe me, she will notice.
No one comes back to what they left behind.
If they wanted more of that, they wouldn't have left in the first place.
Figure out what you want.
Figure out who you are.
Live your life accordingly, without her factoring into any of that.
So today was a struggle day for me, I sent the email to my atty stating my request. It all started last night with my BFF, she is on FB, I am not. I have made it known I don't want to know what he is doing, so therefore FB is not safe for me, considering his sister loves to take pics. Anyway my BFF very sneakily sent me screenshot of a post she saw from yesterday after church, she cropped H out of it to ask me who the guy in the pic was. I answered the question and I guess that opened Pandora box for her to say, "oh yeah H is going to church every Sunday, then they all go out to eat." My response was good that means he heard the sermon from today on relationships. To which she came back with, "oh they're not going to that church." I said, " oh ok, just glad he's going." I was hurt, I was hurt that she stuck the knife in and then twisted it. I was hurt that when my sitch started and still today, everybody in his family couldn't/wouldn't talk to me, not even when he had quadruple by-pass. Yet the SIL is going through the same thing with BIL and they've all surrounded her with support, which I'm glad , I just wish I had been given the same treatment instead of feeling like yesterday's garbage. That's where the struggle day began and continued until tonight. Our church is having revival, and I'm glad I needed my faith tank filled. One of the ladies that I am friends with and is standing, believing with me, she and I were having a long conversation and she told me abt a video I needed to watch and sent me the link(by the way the girl in the video is the daughter of a gospel singer). I just got through watching it and boy oh boy did I see every one of our situations in this video, not only did I see our situations, I also saw hope through prayer. Her mom and husband never stopped praying and standing on the promises of God's word. So when u think your prayers aren't being heard, don't lose faith because he hears them, he sees u, he sees our spouses, he knows where they are and what they're doing, so don't give up, don't stop praying.
Last edited by job; 08/13/2401:04 PM. Reason: Removed link.
As one of the rules of the forum, we aren't suppose to include outside links in our postings.
It's ok to stand, but do not stay in one place too long. You do not want to be stuck, i.e., like your h is right now in his rabbit hole.
You have to stay positive and have faith that God has a plan and he will decide what will happen with your h and with you. We are fixers and we want to fix everything and have our lives go back to the way they were. If and when your h wakes up, your marriage will be different. You cannot go back to the way things were. Each day will be a new beginning and with that being said, any and all changes that you have made while he is in La La Land must remain in place.
When he returns, there will be at least 12-18 months of him second guessing himself as to whether he should stay or go again. This part of the crisis will be the hardest because you will want to move on and get over it. He will ask you if you want him to go, especially when he sees you get impatient with how long it is taking for him to recommit 100%. Don't rush the process! It took a while for him to go into crisis and it will take just as long, if not longer, for him to return to earth.
As for friends and family, they mean well, but you have to remember, especially his family....you don't know what he's told them. Blood is thicker than water and they will believe everything he tells them. In most cases, they will side with him for a very long time. You won't be able to talk to them about the situation. Many of your friends will not understand what is going on. If you have a couple of good friends, talk to them. Allow them to be your sounding board. You do not need to justify yourself to anyone. You know what was real and what was memorex in your marriage.
Keep focusing on you. Listen to your lawyer. People mean well, but they do not understand until it happens to them. They are not walking a mile in your shoes.
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
Sorry abt posting the link job, thanks for fixing it.
I guess with his family, I don't want to talk abt the sitch, I would just like a thank you or thumbs up when I tell someone HBD, heck they could even give me the middle finger, IDC, just respond. I guess it hurts my feelings that SIL isn't blood and hasnt been in the family as long as me, yet is being treated that way. She is everything they want to be. She comes from money, and knows how to manage it, has a good education and a great job. I feel like I have never measured up to their expectations, which is crazy. I guess it's that way because they've always wanted what they don't have and they are all abt status, or at least the sister is. Always wanted to have the very best of everything even though she can't afford it. Idk why I'm on this soap box, let me get off.
My BFF she does mean well and doesn't like it that I have been treated this way. She tries to give advice but does it in a negative way and has always been this way. I just have to pick and choose what I listen to and what I dont I sometimes think she is more upset with him then I. I really have to be careful what I share with what people, which is hard cause I'm an open book, I just don't always want your opinion. So, I guess it's just best if I keep my mouth shut....LOL
As far as standing, when i say that i am referring to standing and beliving with me in prayer, I'm standing in general, not for the marriage we had but the marriage we will have.
Whatlee, hope you're doing well under the circumstances.
For what it's worth, I was a very open book with 4 people in my life after BD. I needed to vent and share and get advice. That number is now down to 1 and sometimes 2. I've learned so much about MLC and I've found that my sharing with people didn't render the results I expected. People don't always know what to say or how to support us. Sometimes, people want our hurt to go away and suggest that we move on. People may look at us (or even tell us) that we're delusional because what we share doesn't make sense. I can't fault them. Instead, I started questioning why I share. What do I gain from sharing?
Now, I have one person that I share near everything with. She has a strong understanding of MLC. Still shakes her head, but really tries to see it as a mental health issue. Still, there are days (including yesterday), that she suggests talking with H. I've told her that I can't control her actions but that I don't think H is ready to hear from her. To date, she's held off.
I say all this because I can hear your pain and disappointment in responses/reactions. Think through why you share/vent and make adjustments, if warranted.
You know this community understands and can give you direction, 2x4s, support, strength. You may not always hear what you want to hear, but you know we understand and can.
Hugs to you.
H:49 W:49 M:26; T:32 D21; S23 BD1: Feb 2023 (I think it was a BD) BD2: Sept 2023 Moved out: Dec 2023
